The present invention relates to cyclometer registers and, more particularly, to flip-over mechanisms for cyclometer registers.
Cyclometer registers are employed in accumulating measured quantities such as, for example, distances, times and the like. For reasons of concreteness of description, the following disclosure is directed to a cyclometer register in an electric meter.
A conventional electric meter employs an aluminum disk driven as a rotor of a small induction motor at a speed proportional to the electric power being consumed. Cyclometer drums integrate the disk motion to indicate the total energy consumed thereon. Each cyclometer drum is marked with decimal digits 0 through 9. The reading of the cyclometer register is made up of the series of numerals formed by the set made up of one numeral from each of the cyclometer drums. The readings on each cyclometer drum has a significance equal to ten times the reading on its next lower-significance neighbor. The cyclometer drums of a cyclometer register may indicate, for example, tenths, units, tens and hundreds of kilowatt hours.
A least significant cyclometer drum is generally driven by the aluminum disk through suitable reduction gearing. In the above example, the least significant cyclometer drum may indicate tenths of a kilowatt hour. This cyclometer drum is called the driver drum because, apart from displaying its own data, it provides the connection for driving all of the other cyclometer drums at ratios according to their significance. These are called driven drums. A carry operation is performed by pinions disposed between each adjacent pair of cyclometer drums. Each driven drum remains stationary except during time that the next lower-significance drum driving it performs the transition from 9 to 0.
The driver drum requires a significant time to make the 9-to-0 transition. During this transition, one reading the meter may not be certain which numeral to accept from the driver drum. Furthermore, the carry operation to higher-significance drums takes the same amount of time to make the transition from one numeral to the next as does the driver drum. Uncertainty as to which numeral to accept may produce substantial errors when an attempt is made to read the meter while a transition is in progress.
One way to attempt to solve the ambiguity during transition may include employing an unbalanced fly-wheel on the drum axis. When the unbalanced fly-wheel is pushed by the driver drum, it stores potential energy which is released against the driven drums during a 9 to 0 transition. The stored potential energy helps urge the driver drum to reduce the time taken to complete the transition.
This technique has a number of drawbacks. When the potential energy in the unbalanced fly-wheel is converted to kinetic energy in the driver drum, the fly-wheel continues to oscillate about its minimum potential energy position. During such osciliation the fly wheel may strike the driver drum. This may disturb the indication provided by the driver drum. It therefore is customary to ignore the indication of the driver drum in such a system. As a result, an order of magnitude in sensitivity of indication is relinquished. That is, if the driver drum is capable of indicating 0.1 KWh, ignoring the reading on the driver drum degrades the sensitivity to 1 KWh. In addition, no provision is included for adjusting the amount of imbalance of the fly-wheel to optimize the operation of the cyclometer register.